Creating Value by Bringing Hospital Care Home

COVID-19 is prompting hospitals and health care systems to reconsider how and where they deliver care to patients. Many see the patient’s home as the safest and most effective option for certain conditions and patients. As a result, the hospital-at home model – where patients receive acute-level care in their homes, rather than in a hospital – is emerging as a promising approach to improve value for patients. This issue brief examines the hospital-at-home model and highlights examples of hospitals from across the country successfully implementing hospital-at-home care for their patients.

The structure and implementation of hospital-at home care varies based on the needs and capacity of the hospital and its patient population. Some hospitals run the program out of the emergency department (ED) and admit eligible patients to their homes, while others rely on community paramedics or specialty clinics to refer patients into the program. Hospitals may focus on a specific patient population for hospital-at-home care, such as providing oncology care or post-surgical monitoring at home, enabling a planned “home admission” to replace or shorten an inpatient stay.